


Tied the Knot

by Ferrero13



Series: Negative Control [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Anesthesia, Established Relationship, M/M, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrero13/pseuds/Ferrero13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes people tell their nurses things that they don't tell their lab partners. Other times it turns out that their nurses and their lab partners are the same person.</p><p>Newt isn't complaining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tied the Knot

**Author's Note:**

> This fic's probably less funny than the first, but if you like a bit of sappiness, then you might prefer this one. I tried to make it funny but Newt always ended up as a caricature, so I had to go for a different approach.

After Newt ended up in hospital for appendicitis on their honeymoon, Hermann hasn’t let him live it down for the past month. Newt would like to rub falling down the stairs in Hermann’s face, but it’s mostly his fault it happened anyway. Although who could honestly blame him? Hermann looked so damned good in that moment hurling insults about Newt’s inability to comprehend the intricacies of String Theory that Newt sort of forgot himself and kind of jumped him right at the top of the stairs.

It did not end well, needless to say.

In fact, it ended so badly that Hermann’s head is wrapped in enough bandages to cover both eyes. Newt runs a hand through his hair. The doctor said that Hermann will be okay as long as Newt didn’t knock Hermann down another flight of stairs. She also said that Newt could kiss Hermann—but lightly, and things have to be kept PG13 so that Hermann’s blood pressure doesn’t rise and threaten to reopen all his head wounds. Newt is torn between mortification and amusement that the doctor thought it necessary to give those warnings.

Because Newt is not Hermann, he doesn’t read ‘A Brief History of Time’ while waiting for Hermann to wake. He does, however, end up reading an arguably equally nerdy book about genetics.

\---

Hermann doesn’t do anything as undignified as groan when he does regain consciousness. He just goes so unnaturally still in a way that’s so characteristic of Hermann when he’s uncomfortable that Newt is immediately alerted to it.

Newt puts his book down without hesitation. “How are you feeling?”

“Why are my eyes covered?” Hermann asks instead of answering.

“Well…” Newt trails off, trying to decide if he should be honest. “There was an accident,” he finally says lamely.

“I gathered.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Who are you?” Of course Hermann couldn’t ever cooperate with Newt even if they’re married now. And of course Hermann has to pretend to forget who Newt is even if they’re married now. In fact, marrying Hermann doesn’t seem to have changed anything. The only difference is that Newt gets to be the first one medics call if Hermann ever got into trouble (which is surprisingly frequently even though the most dangerous things Hermann works with are paperclips and the occasional national secret).

“Who do you think I am?” Two can play this game.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re clearly one of the newer medical staff if you haven’t immediately informed me that my visit to the infirmary is due to one of Doctor Geiszler’s experiments gone wrong. Everyone knows to tell me the details immediately so I don’t get a heart attack when I get back and step into a puddle of Kaiju blue.”

“Ah. Is that how things are around here?” Newt grins. “In that case I’m obligated to inform you that _Doctor Geiszler_ is only halfway responsible for your plight.”

“I find that very difficult to believe.”

“Nevertheless—you’re a man of science. You must accept the truth.”

Hermann snorts. “You may have a lovely voice, but I will accept only what I have evidence for.”

Newt makes a vague humming sound but doesn’t offer any compelling evidence. “So I have a lovely voice, huh?”

Hermann splutters. “On second thoughts, no, you don’t. It’s shrill and reedy and incredibly annoying.”

“Don’t let your husband hear you say that,” Newt continues to tease. “Speaking of husbands, I have something for you.” He pulls a ring—just a simple band, no stones and no embellishments but for the Newt’s name engraved on its inner surface—and slips it onto Hermann’s finger. “You promised never to take this off and then broke that promise within a month. But don’t worry, you can pin the blame on the surgery. I’m sure your husband understands.”

Hermann scowls. “I don’t have a husband. And I made no such promise. Take it off.”

“I’m sorry but I can’t do that. Doctor Geiszler made a promise to force it on you if you ever take it off, and since I’m the only one in the room to do anything about it…”

“Why would I agree to that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because you’re married to him?”

Hermann falls silent. It should be discouraging but Newt has ten years of being alternatively ignored and yelled at to acclimatise himself to how Hermann can burn hot and cold in the span of a minute. The fact that Hermann probably believes that it’s ten years ago—when they still pretended that Newt really hated Hermann’s hair and Hermann really hated Newt’s voice—only serves to amuse Newt.

“Am I missing some years of my life?”

“Yes.”

Hermann doesn’t move or make a sound for the next four minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Then, he says with a voice so thin and high that it could pass for a screech, “I married Newton? I MARRIED NEWTON?”

Newt grins. He's forgotten how high strung Hermann used to be about him. “Hey, you were the one who proposed. Don’t ask me why you did that. Sometimes I wonder if you were in your right mind when it happened.”

Hermann frowns. “I may not like Newton’s way of conducting his experiments, but he’s neither hideous nor a terrible person. I’m sure I married him for a reason, even if I can’t make a reasonable guess as to what it is at the moment. I have every faith that the reason will reveal itself in due time. Although I suspect that I may still be searching for an answer on my deathbed.”

“What high praise.”

“There are far worse people to be suddenly married to,” Hermann says almost dismissively. His words are kind only in the patronising way a graduate can be said to be smarter than a fifth grader. To Newt, it sounds like Hermann is underwhelmed by who his past self has decided to marry.

Newt shrinks in a bit on himself. It feels like his heart has slowed, like he’s a bit less of a person than he was before. Logically, he knows that this Hermann isn’t the one he married, but he looks so much like him that it still hurts. It's been less than a day and he already kind of sort of really misses Hermann recognising him and cherishing him and validating him _and making him feel better about himself that he normally wakes up feeling_. He has to remind himself that this isn’t the Hermann that’s stayed up all night with him when he feels like the air has suddenly vanished from the world, that this Hermann simply doesn’t know. “And far better,” Newt eventually whispers, rubbing a hand up and down his arm, thumb digging into his sleeve of tattoos.

Hermann, as seems to have become a new normal for him ever since the waking up, falls silent for long enough that Newt gives up counting the seconds. When he speaks with a sigh, all the fight has gone out of him. “Newton is a perfectly wonderful person, and I know that the lot of you are aware that I do genuinely think that. All of you busybodies have been waiting for this day ever since our first lab accident. Why are you suddenly trying to dissuade me from being pleased that I’ve actually married him?” Hermann sounds a bit reluctant, a bit unsure, but he doesn’t sound the least bit displeased.

On closer inspection, Newt notices that Hermann’s cheeks—half covered in bandages—are just the slightest bit red. Newt’s heart starts to beat again, and he’s suddenly acutely aware of how warm the blood rushing through his ears, his fingers, his own cheeks is. “Oh. _Oh._ You _do_ like him.”

“It’s not as if you nosy medics haven’t taken to reminding me of that every single time I end up here.” Is Hermann _sulking_? “Also, I’m apparently married to him now. Of course I like him. He’s frustrating and idealistic but he’s _Newton_. I’ve known him for years—I know there’s more brilliance than stupidity in that head of his, even if he doesn’t display much of anything but stupidity. It’s a wonder what that brilliance ever saw in me that he agreed to marry me.”

Newt’s mouth splits into a grin. It’s not the most romantic thing Hermann’s ever said to him, but it’s still so unbearably nice to know that, even when Hermann was complaining loudly about the music Newt played and the Kaiju innards that inexplicably found their way to Hermann’s side of the lab, there was a part of him—a part buried very, very deeply and apparently only shown to random Shatterdome medics—that felt that Newt was somehow _worth it_. Somehow husband-worthy. Somehow _brilliant_. “So. Newton, huh? Despite all your stuck up pretentiousness, have you ever really thought of him as ‘Doctor Geiszler’?”

Hermann sniffs. “I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

“You just spent the last ten minutes telling me why _Newton_ is the best thing since Ramanujan 1. I don’t think a little more is going to hurt anybody.”

“Yes, well. I’ve reached my quota of honesty for today.”

“Surely you can spare some for your husband?”

“Unless _you’re_ Newton, that is in no way a convincing argument…” Hermann trails off, and his jaw goes slack. “You _are_ Newton, aren’t you?”

“The one and only.” Newt is grinning so hard that his cheeks hurt.

“How did I not recognise you earlier?"

“You're on the good drugs and half your head, including your ears, is wrapped in bandages,” Newt offers as a half-hearted explanation. He’s much more interested in watching Hermann try to decide on what he’s feeling at the moment. Embarrassment seems to be high on the list of considerations.

“This is ridiculous. You can’t be Newton. I would know your voice in my sleep. A few layers of cloth isn’t going to stop me.”

Newt’s facial muscles try valiantly to widen his grin. “Wow, now _that_ is high praise.”

“Newton, if we’re married—and I doubt you’d lie about this even if you’re less than completely honest about things such as how dangerous your experiments are—then you’ve no doubt heard higher praise. I’m cranky, but I’m not completely heartless, especially not to my husband. Please put me out of my misery and _stop laughing at me_!”

“I’m not laughing,” Newt says. He is fairly close though.

“Perhaps not now, but you’re about to,” Hermann says accusingly.

Newt breaks into helpless giggles. “I can’t help it! You’re just so sweet when you defend me to strange medics.” He then sobers a bit, and his smile turns bashful. Reaching out to hold Hermann’s hand, he whispers, “It makes me very happy.”

Hermann, once again, doesn’t say anything for a few heartbeats. Then, “I’m glad. I’m sure you’ve made me very happy too.”

“You haven’t thrown your ring away yet, so I’m assuming I did. I do. I will.”

Hermann’s fingers tighten briefly around Newt’s. “I can’t speak for the past or the future, but right now, you do.”

Newt just wants to bury his face in his hands and grin stupidly to himself but he resists just so that he can continue holding Hermann’s hand. It’s nice. A lot about Hermann is nice. In fact, Hermann is just about the nicest thing that has ever happened to Newt.

“So, um. The doctor said you should be resting. You want me to read you to sleep?”

“What am I? Five years old?” Hermann says, sounding offended.

Newt shrugs. “You sometimes sleep better when you know you’re not alone.”

“You know, unless I’m holding a heated slab of silicone gel shaped like a hand, I’m very much aware that I’m not alone.” Hermann squeezes his hand. “But go ahead. I think I’d like to hear more of your lovely voice.”

Newt presses a quick kiss to Hermann’s knuckles. He flips open his book single-handedly and starts reading, and continues to feel the soreness in his cheeks until Hermann drifts off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician (1887-1920) who pretty much took the (mathematical) world by storm despite having received almost no formal training.  
> If anybody wants book recommendations, Newt's reading 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins.


End file.
